Understanding
Dictionary Entry
Structure
PRESENTED BY : MD AMIRUL HOSSEN JEWEL
ID NO: 20114021
DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS
UNIVERSITY OF CHITTAGONG
Contents:
Fundamentals of Dictionary Entries
Consistency and Clarity in Entries
Navigating the Entry:
The Lemma Headword
Meaning in monolingual dictionaries
Meaning and translation in bilingual dictionaries
Sense Indicators
Grammar
Usage
Fundamentals of Dictionary Entries
User Profile Considerations Entry Components
A dictionary entry must be crafted Each dictionary entry comprises
considering the needs and skills of several standard components like
the expected users. The entry headwords, pronunciations,
structure and content need to be meanings, usage examples, and
clear and consistent to avoid user etymological details. We'll discuss
frustration and ensure easy how these are assembled and the
navigation. rationale behind them.
Consistency and Clarity in Entries
Structure and Style Guide
The Style Guide Planning Entries
A Style Guide ensures consistency Understanding and planning entries
across entries. It dictates the type of involves navigating through complex
information to include, how it should decisions on the structure - whether
be laid out, and provides guidelines flat or hierarchical, the information
on entry components depending on type, and how MWEs (Multiword
the dictionary's focus. Expressions) are handled.
Navigating the Entry:
The Lemma Headword
Polusemmus word :- Polysemous word is a lemma containing several LUs; it can belong to one or more than one wordclass.
Monosemous Word :- A monosemous word belonging to a single wordclass is both a lemma and an LU
The components introduced here are principally used to carry information about the headword (lemma), although they can also appear
within an LU, with information that refers only to that particular LU.
These headword-oriented components are :
1. Pronunciation :- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
2. Variant form: This component shows an alternative spelling or slight variation in the form of this word.
3. Frequency marker: This is a relatively new component, which depends on access to a large corpus.
4. Inflected form: This component indicates the various inflections of the headword.
5. Etymology: This component shows the origin of the world and how it developed through time.
Meaning in monolingual dictionaries
Gloss: This component allows a more informal explanation
of the meaning of a multiword expression.
Pragmatic force gloss: its purpose is to
explain the pragmatic message carried by a
word or phrase.
Graphic illustration: This component
includes photographs, drawings, diagrams,
etc. Which appear in the text in order to
clarify the meaning of a headword.
Meaning and translation in bilingual
dictionaries:
There are three methods –
i. Direct translation : TL headwords are mostly same to the SL headwords.
E.g : Basket – Jhuri; Clock– Ghori
ii. Near-equivalent : In place of direct or contextual when there is no real TL
equivalent of the SL headword or phrase, it is used.
For example- In English to Bangla Dictionary translation.
iii. Contextual translation : In terms of context,
this method is applied in the absence of direct translation.
Sense Indicators
It is a component is designed to lead people to the right path of the entry.
There are 2 types of sense indicators.
Specifiers Collocators
(in mono and bilingual ) (only in bilingual)
i. Specifiers – It can contain different types of information , including superordinates ,
synonyms , cohynyms , typical modifiers ,paraphrases and so on.
ii. Collocators –
a) It represent a lexical set which can be of same word class and similar meaning words.
b) It is used for best translation
Grammar
Three types of grammar components in learners’ dictionaries:
word class marker: In English, the term would include at least (noun, verb, adjective,
adverb, pronoun, conjunction, preposition, article, and interjection)
Construction – It is considered as the 2 nd layer of grammatical information.
The content of this component depends directly upon what is considered to be
the headword’s ‘syntactic valency’.
E.G. Context code
the children playing NP Ving
Grammar label – It is considered as the 3 rd layer of grammatical information. It depends on
the word classes of the headword and its contents reflect the useful information.
E.G: For nouns, countability is often shown, as in the entries from OALD
(‘C’ countable and ‘U’ uncountable)
Usage
There are 2 types of usage.
[Link]-oriented usage note : It focuses on a group of words relating to one subject also an
useful way of avoiding repeating the information in entries.
Example : In German, Masculine and Feminine Gender are used for everything
(e.g. Mädchen- This girl)
[Link] usage note : This type of notes can contain many different types of information which
are related to headword.
Example – Although , Though
Thank you